The Admission and the Issues

First, there's a confession in this post...read on to find it.

I like Google Keep, and use it for my daily task list, grocery lists, and some other useful notes I'd rather not store in Drive or elsewhere.

Keep has a few flaws. One I've written about extensively, when Google changed some checkbox behaviors to be global instead of per-list. Two others, the subject of this post, are:

  1. Notes can only be rearranged in the "Notes" area, not in Labels.
  2. By default, all labeled notes appear in the "Notes" area.

The Examples

Here are three notes in my Notes area. I can move these around in either Grid or List view.

If I switch to my Groceries label, I can't arrange the notes.

Now, as noted, the order of notes can be controlled in Notes. But unless you're in List view, it's really easy to mess up your other notes.

Now, that's just one of those things, so, fine, I can switch to List view as needed. But this leads to another issue. How many of you have more than twenty or thirty notes? Labeling is great, but by default all those labeled notes appear in the Notes area. What I want is to have my four or five daily notes in their own area and easy to rearrange, and my other notes only appear in their label areas.

I have a couple of options:

  1. Create a Daily label, and only switch to Notes when I need to reorder things. This becomes unwieldly and frustrating quickly.
  2. Only show my daily notes in Notes, and still be able to rearrange my labeled notes on occasion.

Now, for the confession and shout out.

It's my wife who came up with this brilliant solution. Because...she's brilliant!

The Solution: Archive Labeled Posts

It's really that simple. An archived post still appears in its labeled area, but does not appear in Notes.

Archive both of the grocery lists.

They'll no longer appear on the Notes page, but they still appear in the Groceries area.

On the rare occasion I need to reorder my grocery lists, I can Unarchive them, change their order, and rearchive.

The Wrap Up

This is not an ideal solution. I'd like to be able to order my labeled notes in their areas, and I'll bet for many people not being able to do so is a Keep dealbreaker. But for me--and maybe you--this simple (and brilliant!) tip will help keep Keep clean.